The government is considering conserving the Hendala Leprosy Hospital in Wattala as a museum and visitor attraction, with Science and Technology Minister Chrishantha Abeysena touring the site alongside officials to assess whether such a project is feasible.
The hospital dates to the colonial period and retains both its original buildings and much of its historic equipment. Many of those structures are now decaying, and the inspection was intended to establish what could realistically be preserved.
Two developments have prompted the interest. Leprosy is now fully curable, and the hospital is expected to have no resident patients in the years ahead. At the same time, the site is regarded as historically significant in its own right.
Beyond the Dutch-era buildings, the grounds hold what is described as the first laundry machine brought to Sri Lanka, manufactured in England in 1939. Patients who died at the hospital were buried on the same grounds, and the wooden carts once used to carry the bodies remain on site.
No timeline, budget or implementing agency has been announced, and the inspection appears to be an early feasibility assessment rather than an approved project.
The proposal touches a sensitive history. For most of the institution’s existence, leprosy patients in Sri Lanka were separated from their families and communities for life, and a site of that kind carries the record of that isolation as much as it does the colonial architecture. Any museum would have to decide how much of that story to tell alongside the buildings and machinery.
LankaNewz found no other newsroom reporting on this inspection at the time of publication. This account rests on a single source and will be updated if further detail emerges.
